How do you rebuild a life taken from you for 16 years? You fight—not just for yourself, but for others, too. In this episode, Jeffrey Deskovic, Esq., shares his journey from being wrongfully convicted at 17 to becoming a powerful advocate for justice. Exonerated by DNA evidence after 16 years of wrongful imprisonment, Jeffrey now dedicates his life to preventing others from facing the same fate. As the founder of the Deskovic Foundation for Justice, he’s helped free 14 wrongfully convicted individuals and been instrumental in passing nine laws. Hear about his foundation’s mission, the systemic flaws that lead to wrongful convictions, and how therapy and advocacy became key to his recovery. Join us for a compelling conversation about resilience, hope, and the ongoing fight for justice.
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Jeffrey Deskovic, Esq., MA, Founder of Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice
Jeffrey Deskovic, Esq., MA, is the Founder of the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which has freed fourteen wrongfully convicted individuals and helped pass nine laws. Jeffrey is an advisory board member of the national coalition group titled ItCouldHappen2You. Jeffrey sits on the Global Advisory Council of Restorative Justice International. He’s also the Co-owner of the Recharge: Beyond the Bar’s Re-entry Game, which facilitates formerly incarcerated people in reconnecting with friends and family. Jeff’s motivation is that he spent 16 years in prison from age 17 to 32 before being exonerated by DNA evidence. A documentary short titled Conviction, a story about his life after exoneration, is available on Amazon Prime.
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Jeffrey, thank you for joining me.
Thank you for having me on.
It’s great to see you face-to-face. I’m hoping you can start us off by telling us a little bit about how you got into the work you’re doing and what drives your passion for it.
Deskovic Foundation For Justice
I’m an attorney and I have a nonprofit organization, Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice. Our mission is to free people who are in prison for crimes they didn’t commit and to work to prevent those injustices from happening in the first place. We’ve freed 14 people since opening our doors in 2011. We have helped to pass 3 laws and another 6 as key members of the national coalition group, ItCouldHappen2You.
I got into doing this work because I survived wrongful imprisonment myself. I spent 16 years in prison from age 17 to 32 for a murder and rape which I did not commit prior to being exonerated by DNA evidence. My passion is to free people in the same position I was once in while preventing what happened to me from happening to others.
Maintaining Hope
The big question I have for someone like you when that happens is, how did you maintain any semblance of hope? How did you maintain your personality as you would’ve hoped it would be?
Belief in God was a big key. Another thing is I didn’t focus on the fifteen-to-life sentence that I had. I thought I had to hold on for a year or two until the next appeal was going to be decided, which I was sure that I was going to win and then regain my freedom. I used to go to the law library and study the law. That would give me a sense of empowerment. I would collect articles about other people who were exonerated so I would use that as motivation. I would study who helped them and what route they took.
In addition to that, I knew that nobody was coming to my rescue and that I was going to have to hold it together, try to recruit somebody that I didn’t know already, and hope that they could build the bridge between me and the legal help that I needed. I had read that that had happened in other cases. I had the luxury of losing my mind, so I had to keep fighting off feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, thoughts of giving up, and suicidal ideation.
There was another prisoner there named Frank Sterling who was innocent as well. We used to get together once every six weeks. Half the conversation would be about maintaining our morale, and the other half would be a brainstorming session about what’s the next move to make. Frank was ultimately exonerated by DNA testing after eighteen years inside. He was exonerated a couple of years after me. My point is that I wasn’t naively believing in someone else’s innocence because I happened to be innocent.
I had a pen pal in my last year of imprisonment. I had placed an ad looking for a pen pal. I was desperate for some outside hope. This pen pal showed up right in the nick of time. I was asking a stranger I didn’t know from anywhere, “Do you think I should quit? Should I give up? Should I commit suicide? I’m never going to get out of here.” He encouraged me to keep going. All of those things were factors in surviving my ordeal, maintaining some sanity, and maintaining some hope. I could not have made it without hope.
What year did you get out?
Was it 2019 that you got your law degree?
That’s exactly right. I want to quickly share that I was convicted even though the DNA didn’t match me. The conviction was caused by a coerced false confession, prosecutorial misconduct, and fraud by the medical examiner, juror, and public defender. I did lose seven appeals. I got turned down for parole largely because I maintained my innocence rather than expressing remorse and taking responsibility.
I was exonerated through further DNA testing through the data bank which not only affirmed my innocence but also identified the actual perpetrator whose DNA was only there in the data bank because it was left free. While I was doing time for his crime, he killed the 2nd victim 3 and a half years later after killing the victim in my case.
In an article that I read about your situation, you mentioned the real tragedy is we’re hurting innocent people and we’re not using our resources properly to catch the actual guilty parties and keep them from creating more suffering in the world.
That is exactly correct. There is an important public safety aspect of it, which is often overlooked. When I was released, I started doing advocacy work. I was speaking. I was a weekly columnist, so I was writing, I was doing media and new media interviews, so training privacy for awareness. I was regularly meeting with elected officials.
I got a scholarship to Mercy College. I finished my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t get into law school, so I went to grad school and got a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice. My thesis was written on wrongful conviction and cause and reform. After about five years, I received some financial compensation. I used some of it to start the organization.
In the course of that, at some point, I became not satisfied with sitting in the front row of the courtroom. I wanted to be able to sit at the defense table, represent some of the clients, and make some of the arguments. Hence, going to law school and becoming an attorney in pursuit of the dream of exonerating others as a lawyer.
Wrongful Convictions
What year did you find the foundation?
Back in 2011.
You said since then, you’ve been instrumental in getting how many people freed?
Fourteen.
Are there a number of cases that you’re actively working on still?
Yeah. One of them is Andre Brown’s case. I’m co-counsel with lead attorney Oscar Michelen. He’s an advisory board member of the foundation. We did overturn Andre’s case, but the district attorney’s office has appealed the reversal. We’re waiting for the court to give us a court date and the decision. That’s one case.
Eliseo DeLeon is another from Brooklyn. His conviction had been overturned. It was 1 of the cases caused by retired Detective Scarcella who has had seventeen of his cases overturned. Mr. DeLon went back to trial. He was wrongfully convicted again. We appealed the decision. We’re in the process of trying to exonerate him. Cameron Isaac is another case. We’ll be filing his case in court. We have a total of thirteen cases that we’re working on to try to exonerate people.
In your personal experience, the work you’ve done, and the studies you’ve done since getting out and working as an advocate, what are you aware of as the driving forces for why innocent people get caught up in this process?
Prosecutorial misconduct is a factor that runs through many of the cases. Other factors include misidentification. That has caused wrongful convictions in 71% of the DNA-proven wrongful convictions. Coerced false confessions have caused wrongful convictions in 29% of the cases. Lying informants, bad lawyering, junk science, forensic fraud, tunnel vision, all these things have contributed to wrongful conviction cases.
Where’s the biggest hope? What is it that you see that you hope your foundation and others working for the rights of the innocent? Where do you see the biggest potential for positive change?
The Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct is an independent oversight board that can investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The foundation and the coalition group, ItCouldHappen2You, along with many other advocates and organizations, were able to pass the bill in New York. It was a landmark bill, the first of its kind. We’re trying to export that to California. If both New York and California pass a law, the rest of the country generally follows. It’s important to have some oversight of the prosecutors. We hope that that will generate some deterrence that they’ll think twice before engaging in misconduct.
What is the motivation for a prosecutor to get into misconduct? Is it simply wanting their record to reflect that they won a case?
Yes, it is. It’s also the things that flow from that. If you win a high percentage of your cases, then you can be in line to get a promotion, and with that is increased pay on the level of the district attorney. A lot of times, when people and district attorneys are running for re-election, they run on their conviction rate. They’re like, “I got a 99% conviction rate.” They might aspire to a higher political office as well. Tunnel vision can play a factor. That is in the mind when you form a conclusion and then you work backward, ignore evidence that is contrary to that conclusion, and accept evidence that confirms it. All those things are factors.
On the other side, there’s the oversight. The other thing that comes to my mind is the idea of a more robust education for prosecutors about what is prosecutorial malfeasance and what is proper. Is there a movement underway to help educate the prosecutors about what they can do to stay safe and keep everybody safe, both the innocent people and the community?
Yes, there are. In brief, there are training sessions that are held out in front of district attorney associations and district attorney groups. Also, the causes of wrongful convictions are known. Some prosecutors learn what causes wrongful convictions. They get an idea of what the red flags are, that a confession may be false, that an eyewitness may be mistaken, or that an informant might be lying. We need prosecutors to know what the causes are to have a working knowledge of that and to evaluate cases that are brought to them to have a step-back approach and analyze things as opposed to prosecuting everything that’s brought to them automatically.
Rebuilding Life Back
You have that on the side of trying to right the wrong that you were caught up in. On a more personal note, what was most beneficial for you after you got out in terms of helping you build yourself back up? I don’t presume to know what your mental state was while you were in prison, but what was most beneficial for you to move from there to the position where you can be in school, pursue your own law degree, and start your own foundation. What were some of the most powerful, helpful things for you personally in that process?
When I received some financial compensation, that was a big tool in terms of trying to rebuild my life. It was really a struggle before that. I was always passed over for gainful employment. It seemed like all the managers and decision-makers wanted somebody who had experience and who could hit the job running rather than having patience for on-the-job training.
When I was compensated, at least at that point, I had the financial pressure taken off me. I knew I would be able to cover my bills that way. That was a big factor. I used to see mental health professionals four times a week. I did that for six years. That helped me deal with the psychological after-effects. Another was learning the technology. When I was released, tech in the world was changed. GPS, cell phones, and the internet hadn’t been created. The culture was different. Cities and towns looked different.
Cumulatively, those three things made me feel like I was in a parallel world. The more I learned technology, the more tied in I felt. The more time passed by, that helped also. I rebuilt relations with my extended and immediate family, the majority of whom had never come to visit me or the ones who did very sporadically. Rebuilding that was a factor as well.
Did you mention in the middle of that, four times a week seeing a mental health professional?
I did mention that. I did that for six years. It was very difficult to overcome a traumatic experience like that, particularly 1 that lasted for 16 years and then spanned from age 17 to 32. Those are developmental years. Beyond dealing with the typical mental health fallout, there’s PTSD, panic attacks, anxiety, the feeling of processing things at a slower speed, and the feeling of having been frozen in time. Aside from that, I feel like I had particular challenges that made things difficult. I had never lived alone before. I never had a driver’s license. I never went shopping. I never wrote a check. I never had a balance of budget. All those things made things difficult for me.
Deskovic Foundation For Justice: Beyond dealing with the typical mental health fallout, there’s PTSD, panic attacks, anxiety, the feeling of processing things at a slower speed, and the feeling of having been frozen in time.
The learning curve was very steep for you in a lot of areas.
Correct.
If you’ve got these mental health challenges like anxiety issues and the effects of past trauma that well up or can get triggered from time to time, what was your experience of the most useful techniques or approaches that you learned as you were going to therapy 4 times a week for 6 years?
EMDR, that’s Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. You sit there and recall. The therapist helps you to recall a time when you overreacted, and then you trace that back all the way to what was the original traumatic event. At that point, there’s a light that goes back and forward. You follow the light. You don’t move your head. You recall things.
The end result of everything is that you still have the memory but you have a lot of the energy and the emotion removed from it. The idea is that in the future when things trigger a memory, you don’t have all the emotion. When somebody overreacts to PTSD, you’re reacting. When something happens that triggers a memory, you’re reacting to what happened in the memory and not reacting to what took place. Your reaction could be disproportionate.
Let me get a little bit more concrete here. I would get startled if I heard an unexpected loud noise. I might get jumpy. I’d be like, “What happened? What’s going on?” Normally, if there’s some kind of loud, unexpected noise in the prison, that means that there’s an act of violence that’s occurring. When I did therapy, I found that when I do hear unexpected loud noises, I might turn to see what’s going on, but I don’t have this alarmed panic.
You don’t stay in that agitated state anywhere near as long.
Correct.
Advocacy Work
I keep thinking as I’m speaking with you of the book, Messages of Life from Death Row, where Roger McGowen was on death row in Texas for twenty-some years. Are you familiar with that story?
Deskovic Foundation For Justice: Messages of Life from Death Row.
No, I’m not, but I’m going to look it up after this interview. I haven’t read about that one.
The teacher, Pierre Pradervand, became pen pals with him. Roger was imprisoned for something he didn’t do. They knew he didn’t do it, but you know how that system goes. Eventually, they got him off of death row, but the last I heard, he was still in prison in Texas. He chose to learn and teach others what helps us be resilient in difficult situations. He became a spiritual teacher rather than a bitter, resentful individual.
The book, Messages of Life from Death Row, was written by Pierre Pradervand. It contains letters that went back and forth between him and Roger. It brings to mind how rare people like yourself go through these difficult situations. For whatever reason, you’re able to choose rather than get completely swamped by anger and bitterness to turn your energies toward the hopeful side to help yourself and others. I have to thank you for that. I would imagine you’re familiar with the book by Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
I read that book while I was in prison. That was an important book for me. One thing is that I never lost track of my humanity while I was in prison. I understood the prison in more ways and survival tactics, but I never internalized those values on my own. The mind does a lot of things in order to try to help you cope and survive. It gives me a good springboard to share with you that when I would play basketball, chess, or ping pong, I would pretend like I was a professional player and so were the other people around me. It wasn’t like kids fooling around on a playground. It was more that my mind needed to leave the prison for a couple of hours. That’s the delusion that it came up with.
The mind does a lot of things in order to try to help you cope and survive. Share on X
On my first week home, I was angry or bitter, but I felt like it was destroying me. I realized, “I want to enjoy my life as much as I can. I can’t do that while simultaneously being angry and bitter. I’ve lost so much already as is. Why would I want to, in effect, lose the rest of my life?” Also, it’s not like if I was angry or bitter, I would be somehow impacting the people who had a hand in what happened to me. I would be the only loser in that scenario.
The vehicle that allows me to actualize that is that I take the energy that I feel and channel it into the advocacy work that I do. I do make sense of my life in a kaleidoscopic type of way. I know that I’m doing the work that I’m supposed to do in the world. That’s how I make sense of everything. With that, I have a sense of inner peace.
Reach Out To Jeffrey
If people want to support you, and you’ve got the foundation, how do you encourage them to reach out to you or get in touch?
They can email me through the website, www.Deskovic.org. There is a web form on that page. People could email me that way. We’re also on social media. We’re on Instagram @DeskovicFoundation. I’m on LinkedIn and also on Facebook @JeffreyDeskovic. The foundation’s on Facebook as well. People can message me through any of those social media platforms.
My dream is to have a chapter of the foundation in each state and ultimately in each country. I really see this as a worldwide issue. In countries where we are not hearing about wrongful convictions, it’s not that the injustices aren’t happening. It’s that nobody’s digging, nobody’s looking, and nobody’s being exonerated. That will be when we get the public financial support to do that.
My dream is what if there were 25,000 people who were willing to sacrifice $3 to $5 a month on a recurring monthly basis? That would give us close to $1 million. We would be able to work on additional cases. Our bandwidth would be increased because we’d be able to hire additional attorneys, paralegals, investigators, and other essential personnel.
We do have thirteen active cases. We have another five that are approved but are waiting. We are averaging between 10 to 20 new requests per month, but we’re not able to process any additional cases. We’re really at our limit at this point. I do hope that people will reach out. That’s such a small amount of money, $3 to $5. Yet, if many people did that, it would make a big difference. Maybe that could be some of the audience members, or maybe they have the ear of people who have capacity. Put us on their radar and ask them to check us out.
My biggest challenge as somebody who founded a nonprofit organization is I went from worst to first somewhat artificially through the lawsuit as opposed to making it in business 10, 20, 30, or 40 years. I have a cachet of people I can turn back to. I need third parties who are able to reach the people in their network and connect me with them. I want to be able to have a short conversation of, “Here’s who I am. Here are my credentials. Here’s what the organization’s track record is. Here’s what we could do if we were able to raise the funds we need. Here are the metrics we could be measured by. Is this something that appeals to you?” and be appreciative of people’s time no matter which way they come out.
Exposure is critical. You’re already getting more referrals for people who need your services than you have the bandwidth to help. One of the questions I was going to ask is, where do you get your referrals of people who feel they’ve been wrongfully imprisoned? Apparently, there’s no shortage of those.
There’s no shortage of that, but I’ll share with you the answer anyway. I’m somewhat of a legend in the New York State prison system. That’s one thing. Whenever I do media or even new media interviews with friends, family advocates, or people who allege they’re wrongfully imprisoned, we usually see a spike in requests for help that way.
It’s DeskovicFoundation.org.
They can even type in Deskovic.org and our website will come up. I want to share that I’m home and I’m free. This isn’t about me anymore. This is really about the men and women that I metaphorically left behind. 100% of whatever is contributed will go to the cause of freeing people. None of it will end up in my pocket under any line of reasoning. I’m fine. Whatever I receive by way of compensation, I have it invested conservatively. It pays a certain amount of money per month, which I treat as a salary. That allows me to focus my time full-time on doing the work. It’s that we need to hire additional people so we can increase our capacity. With that comes the need to raise funds.
This isn’t about me anymore. This is really about the men and women that I metaphorically left behind. Share on X
I appreciate that you’re out there and that you’ve chosen that path of hope and positivity. I encourage you to keep me posted if you end up writing a book about this or if you’ve got another promotional situation coming up. People can find you on social media and at Deskovic.org. I am thrilled that you chose the path you did and that you’re doing the positive work you are doing with it.
Thank you very much. Your words mean a lot. I will reach out when we have other things coming on. The last point I’ll make is if people have enjoyed the interview and you’d like to hear a little bit more about my story, there is a documentary short out on Amazon Prime. It’s called Conviction. There are a couple of works there by that name. The one pertaining to me will have my picture on it.
Thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Thank you very much for having me on. I’ve enjoyed it. God bless.
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Jeffrey Deskovic, Esq., MA, is the Founder of the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which has freed fourteen wrongfully convicted individuals and helped pass nine laws. Jeffrey is an advisory board member of the national coalition group titled ItCouldHappen2You. Jeffrey sits on the Global Advisory Council of Restorative Justice International. He’s also the Co-owner of the Recharge: Beyond the Bar’s Re-entry Game, which facilitates formerly incarcerated people in reconnecting with friends and family. Jeff’s motivation is that he spent 16 years in prison from age 17 to 32 before being exonerated by DNA evidence. A documentary short titled Conviction, a story about his life after exoneration, is available on Amazon Prime.
Important Links:
- Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice
- ItCouldHappen2You
- Restorative Justice International
- Recharge: Beyond the Bar’s Re-entry Game
- Messages of Life from Death Row
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- LinkedIn – Jeffrey Deskovic
- Facebook – Jeffrey Deskovic
- Facebook – The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation
- https://www.Patreon.com/Deskovic
- https://www.Instagram.com/DeskovicFoundation/
- https://www.Amazon.com/Conviction-Jeffrey-Deskovic/dp/B08F9CN2XG
About Jeffrey Deskovic
Jeffrey Deskovic, Esq., MA, is the founder of The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which has freed 14 wrongfully convicted individuals and helped pass 9 laws. An Advisory Board member of the national coalition group, It Could Happen To You, Jeff sits on the Global Advisory Council of Restorative Justice International. Jeff is the co-owner of the Recharge Beyond The Bars Re-Entry Game, which facilitates formerly incarcerated people reconnect with friends and family. Jeff’s motivation is he spent 16 years in prison-from age 17 to 32-before being exonerated by DNA. A documentary short, “Conviction”, about his life after exoneration, is available on Amazon Prime.
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